Born from the experience of PET Engineering – a company founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Moreno Barel, Gentlebrand is an all-Italian excellence that has succeeded in asserting its leadership in both the national and international markets, on the strength of a strategic and innovative vision. Andrea Rizzardi, the company’s General Manager, explains the strengths of a company with a green heart that aims to increasingly combine productivity and competitiveness objectives with a low corporate impact policy.
by Roberta Imbimbo
Dr. Rizzardi, with what mission was Gentlebrand born? Tell us a little about your story.
In 1999, entrepreneur Moreno Barel had the brilliant intuition to found PET Engineering in Treviso, a company operating in the packaging market, highly specialised in the design of PET containers for the beverage, food, cosmetics and detergent sectors. One of the first companies to implement innovative design elements in the world of engineering related to PET containers; and which, precisely because of this high added-value and competitive peculiarity, has managed to assert its leadership on both the domestic and international markets, mainly in Russia, where in the past it has come to design around 80% of beer containers. The ability to bring into perfect dialogue the creative aspect linked to the world of design, and the technical aspect linked to the sphere of industrial engineering, soon attracted the attention of Sidel, an international group specialised in the sector of automatic machines for bottling food and non-food liquids, which in 2018 acquired the two beating souls of the company, giving life to two distinct and dedicated corporate identities. Today Gentlebrand, is the business unit capable of taking care of all creative services (brand strategy, brand identity, packaging design and obviously all brand activation services related to rebranding, repackaging or restyling cases); a future-oriented reality, with a strong propensity for internationalisation and environmental sustainability.
What kind of market is it in which you operate? And what peculiarities distinguish you from your competitors?
Even though it is a highly competitive market, Gentlebrand has succeeded in establishing itself both nationally and internationally, thanks to its ability to design tailor-made solutions, rigorously customised and tailored to the needs of each individual customer. Today, packaging must be able to tell the story of the brand, its values and its mission. This is why, at Gentlebrand, feasibility, i.e. the feasibility of every single project, is studied at 360 degrees, from creativity to industrialisation to prototyping (a sort of quality check to make sure that the idea is transposed into reality and is really productive, guaranteeing the volumes that the customer is looking for in the order of the planned investment), taking into account brand strategy and brand identity, which allow us to formulate design packaging that is highly performing from an aesthetic, functional and emotional point of view. And which allow considerable time and cost savings, since the customer deals with a single, reliable and qualified interlocutor. This working model has obviously proved successful, so much so that it has decreed Gentlebrand’s success at global level.
How important is the issue of environmental sustainability to you?
It is crucial! Having a global knowledge of the trends in this industry, we are absolutely capable of choosing the most sustainable materials suitable for each context, relevance and mode of use, with an eye always on the possibility of reuse and recycling. With this in mind, a radical change of mind is desirable in this sector, starting to consider each material as a resource and not as waste (PET, for example, is often demonised by consumers, while in reality it is a great resource for the industry since it is one of the few materials that can be 100% recycled). Another important goal to be achieved in this sense in Europe, following the example of South Korea where it is already allowed, would be to allow the use of the no-label trend, i.e., the removal of the label from primary packaging to avoid the use of glues and inks that could compromise recycling, in an absolutely closed ‘bottle-to-bottle’ cycle.
So many achievements in so many years of activity. Future goals?
To continue to manage the services offered in the best possible way, also from the sustainability point of view, in order to increasingly maximise customer satisfaction, which has always been our priority objective.
For further information (https://www.gentlebrand.com)
